A bricks-and-mortar retailer sells goods or merchandise from a fixed retail location such as a shop, store, boutique, or kiosk. A customer is an individual that buys the goods or merchandise from the retailer at the fixed retail location.
In a fixed retail location, some products, such as garments, are displayed including hang tags, or swing tickets, affixed to the products. The hang tags, in some examples, are printed paper-based tags, affixed to products in a releasable manner (e.g., using string or thread, plastic fastener, safety pin, etc.). Hang tags include manufacturer-provided hang tags (e.g., including extra buttons, size, and designer logo) and retailer-added hang tags (e.g., including price, size, and sales or clearance indicator). A customer reads the hang tag for information regarding the product.
A customer also buys goods or services from an online retailer that sells goods or merchandise through an online storefront, online shop, or web store. The customer performs online shopping in order to purchase products, goods or services over the Internet. The online retailer provides a web site that includes web pages a customer navigates in order to browse, select and purchase products, goods or services from the online retailer. The online store provides the customer with the physical analogy of buying goods at a bricks-and-mortar retailer.
Web pages are documents or resources of information that are often transferred via the Internet and displayed on web browsers. Many web pages are generated using markup language, for example, hypertext markup language (HTML), which is a text based language for describing graphical documents. Web pages are rendered into a graphical user interface for presentation to a user.
A collection of cohesively designed and implemented web pages is sometimes referred to as a web site. A retail web site includes web pages presenting sales items to users. The sales items may be categorized into departments such as the departments commonly found in a brick-and-mortar retail store. The retail web site, in this case, is designed to allow a user to browse departments of the retail web site in a similar manner to browsing departments in a brick-and-mortar store.
Many retail systems use web pages to provide a personalized experience to a user. Some web pages contain dynamic elements for input and output to provide a rich experience to the user. For example, some retail web pages include a function for submitting a user review related to a sale item. Other users can read the submitted user review to learn more information regarding the item. Another example of a dynamic element includes a control for changing the presentation of the information on a particular web page. If a web page includes multiple sales items, for example, controls can be provided to the user for rearranging the items by price, popularity, or brand.